A magnetic resonance imaging method utilizes a coil sensitivity profile.
The article “Coil Sensitivity Encoding for Fast MRI” by K. P. Pruessmann et al. in Proceedings ISMRM (1998), page 579, deals with a magnetic resonance imaging method involving sub-sampled acquisition of magnetic resonance signals.
The known magnetic resonance imaging method is used in the so-called SENSE technique. In order to form a magnetic resonance image of an object, for example a patient to be examined, the object is arranged in a steady, preferably as spatially uniform as possible magnetic field, so that magnetic nuclear spin polarization is generated. Nuclear spins are excited in the object by one or more RF excitation pulses. Due to precession and relaxation of the nuclear spin polarization, magnetic resonance signals are emitted. The magnetic resonance signals are received by the receiving coils with sub-sampled scanning of the k space of wave vectors of the magnetic resonance signals for a given spatial resolution of the magnetic resonance image. Respective receiving coil images are reconstructed from the sub-sampled magnetic resonance signals acquired by the individual receiving coils. Due to the sub-sampling, such receiving coil images usually contain artifacts such as so-called aliasing effects. A final magnetic resonance image in which the artifacts due to sub-sampling, as they occur in the receiving coil images, have been significantly reduced or even completely eliminated is derived from the receiving coil images and on the basis of the spatial sensitivity profiles of the receiving coils.